


Flowergirl

by testifytime



Series: Hanahaki [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Body Horror, F/F, Minor John Egbert/Dave Strider, very light in relation to flower description and general illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-18 18:59:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13687806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/testifytime/pseuds/testifytime
Summary: When the first petal tumbles from your lips, loosened from the depth of your lungs with a light cough concealed by your hand, you are only partially surprised.Ever since your youthful failings in understanding the extent of the disease that preyed upon your brother and your friend, the flowerboy, the anomaly set to die just as he reached adulthood, you have spent countless years researching, have amassed a sizable collection of facts, theories and opinions that take up at least half of the shelf space in your personal library; the existence of the petal is of no surprise to you, as it had been and would be for victims of it in the past and present. You are aware of how they exist, and exactly what it means.You roll it between your fingertips, assess the silken feel of its firm shape, the slight ridges of veins beneath the surface towards the base, where it would have connected to a growing flower inside your lungs. You pocket it, make a note to visit your doctor sometime in the near future, and consistently clear your throat throughout the day, unable to rid yourself of the feeling of loose petals trapped in your lungs.It is not an ultimately remarkable finding. But it worries you.





	Flowergirl

**Author's Note:**

> This ties in with Flowerboy, actively taking place in the same universe, so there are some references that make more sense when you've read Flowerboy first. It's not vital, however. 
> 
> I also wrote this throughout the day and, two hours after midnight, just got it finished. I am so tired. I hope this fic makes any sort of sense,

When the first petal tumbles from your lips, loosened from the depth of your lungs with a light cough concealed by your hand, you are only partially surprised.

Ever since your youthful failings in understanding the extent of the disease that preyed upon your brother and your friend, the flowerboy, the anomaly set to die just as he reached adulthood, you have spent countless years researching, have amassed a sizable collection of facts, theories and opinions that take up at least half of the shelf space in your personal library; the existence of the petal is of no surprise to you, as it had been and would be for victims of it in the past and present. You are aware of how they exist, and exactly what it means.

You roll it between your fingertips, assess the silken feel of its firm shape, the slight ridges of veins beneath the surface towards the base, where it would have connected to a growing flower inside your lungs. You pocket it, make a note to visit your doctor sometime in the near future, and consistently clear your throat throughout the day, unable to rid yourself of the feeling of loose petals trapped in your lungs.

It is not an ultimately remarkable finding. But it worries you.

 

You are at home, several days later, when the burgeoning desire to empty your airway becomes more than a light cough, a tickle, something that you can hide away into the curled fist of your hand. It wracks through your body instead, urgent in the shivers it forces up your spine, coughs and splutters so violently leaving your throat that your stomach churns, and you curl in on yourself to alleviate the pain. Your body convulses, and you provide yourself with the image of a cat hurling up a furball just as the petal tumbles from your lips, darkened with spittle and what you, with a shudder, assume is bile.

Nothing more comes from the depths of your lungs, so you allow yourself an ungraceful moment to gasp for much needed air. Each breath burns as warm, stuffy air slides down your throat, as if acid had melted away thick layers of lining and flesh, and left you raw and weeping on the inside. It has you swallow very quickly, and gently press a finger as far back as you can manage without gagging to reassure yourself that, yes, you are perfectly fine.

Your finger shines with spittle, not blood, but that fact hardly stops it from shaking like a leaf in the wind.

You feel overly exposed. The petal is terrifying, laying rather sadly in a wet droop on the floor between your feet; a sign of something that you, for once, do not know.

A familiar itch causes your fingertips to twitch in little bursts, a feeling of unrest settling within your bones until, with one quick glance to the petal on the floor, you can stand it no longer.

Your strides are purposeful as you step towards your well-worn bookshelf, overflowing with pages upon pages of wisdom you have endlessly poured yourself over for many a night and day. The tingling in your fingertips worsens as soon as you lay one perfectly manicured nail against the thinning spine of a book, and thus you allow your mind to empty as you let your intuition guide the slide of your finger across each greying tome. A feeling of numbness overcomes you, dulling the feeling of leather, the scent of oft-read books, and you slip into it easily, entertaining your own thoughts.

You are not entirely sure what you are meant to be looking for, but then again, you have never been sure; you have simply always known, when that itch arrives, exactly what it is you need to find. Like being drawn towards a point in a dream, it lures you in comfortably, sweetly, with the sensation of being guided towards something of great importance, something that only you may be privy to.

It was how you learnt about the disease to begin with.

It was how you learnt of your dear friend’s almost-demise.

It takes you a moment to realise that you have come to a stop. Like waking from a deep sleep, you sluggishly come to your senses, your eyes drifting down from their unseeing stare at a shelf above to peer at the book your finger has landed upon. Still not feeling quite yourself, you watch as your fingers slip between the two books surrounding it, clasp to the small indent of the book’s spine, and with all due care begin to slowly slide it out from the bookshelf.

It is a relatively thin book, in comparison to much of your collection; an estimate would suggest perhaps five hundred pages at most, and four hundred at least. It is also hardly the most elegant of its brethren, either; the leather has warped around the thick cardboard that doubtlessly keeps it to shape, curling the corners of the cover away from the pages within. It looks rather like some beast bearing its teeth, and considering the deep crimson each thin leaf of paper has been lined with, it seems as if one that has already landed a kill.

You cannot place the feeling of dread that settles like a lump in your throat as you swallow thickly, feeling it sink down, down, to drop in the pit of your stomach like a lead weight. It seems preposterous that a book, a container of wisdom, an imprint of the words once thought in the twisted throes of a long-forgotten, could bring such physical distress. You are not an entirely superstitious woman - you are, after all, rather fond of black cats - and you fancy yourself rather a level-headed and sensible being.

But the book unsettles you. Tendrils creep into your mind and pierce through your barriers of logic to surge forth something more primal. It is a fear you have never known before, and it causes you to pause.

You have not known very few things. When such a case of unknowing arises as is presented now, you find ways to educate yourself on the matter to tamper down such nonsensical human baseness. You read, and you read, and you read, till your fingers have rubbed thin the covers of your books, till your vision has begun to swim with the words on a bright screen - but in the end, you always find a way to _know_.

You think back to the petal. Still damp on the floor, delicate and beautiful, yet soured by the bile from your stomach and the way of its birthing.

For the first time in a very, very long time, you ask yourself, _do I truly want to know?_

You are no coward. You have faced many things in your life that would give most men a reason to never leave their homes, and you have surged through them all with a distinguished air and a poise of grace. You have overcome every potential obstacle you have faced, including the potential death of a dear friend, and you have triumphed over them all. But you cannot deny cowardice.

You place the book on your coffee table, delicately pluck the petal from the floor with the very tips of your nails, and throw it outside, where it catches on the wind and floats far, far away.

A shiver trails down your spine, but breeze is pleasantly warm in the light of the sun, cascading down in gentle rays through the leaves of the trees that surround your home.

You go back inside with a determination burning inside your chest, and dutifully ignore the book that sits innocently in your living room.

You decide to make yourself some tea instead.

  
  
You successfully go on with your life without a single concern for a whole week.

It is enough to calm your nerves, to reassure yourself that what occurred was a simple fluke and nothing at all more. There have been no more petals, no more itches drawing you to the book like Eve to the apple, and with that you allow yourself a moment to go outside and meet with one of your dear friends.

You decide to wear something simple: a shoulderless purple dress with delicate heels to match so you can soak in the warmth of the summer sun. It accentuates your hips, and hugs you rather nicely in all the appropriate places, and thus is one of your favourite dresses to go for afternoon meetings in.

You arrive at a small cafe only ten minutes of brisk walking after you leave your front door. It is a quaint place, delicately and beautifully styled to retain a sense of regality despite its rather small and cramped space between two high-end restaurants. The white circular tables are placed in an aesthetically pleasing arrangement - dotted with twos and threes and fours of chairs - with red fabric umbrellas blooming from the centre of each. Though there are more chairs inside, and certainly those are more in use, you prefer the gentle shade of the umbrellas, the sweet scent of flowers from the botanist’s business only one shop away to the left.

It brings a graceful smile to your lips, and soothes whatever concerns you may have had remaining from the week before.

Everything is fine, as it always has been.

  
  
Jade arrives a mere ten minutes after you have taken your seat, her hair a wild frenzy, her dark cheeks slightly tinted red. She looks as if she had at least attempted to control the frizz of her hair before she had left, but the wind has done its job from what you can only assume to be a mad sprint from home to the cafe, and it is back to its usual state; strands curling about all over the thick mess of black.

She sits down with a mighty thud, stretching her spine over the back of the chair with a laugh, and fixes you with a smile so wide it puts the Chesire Cat to shame.

You tell her this, and it only grows wider.

It has been a while since you last saw Jade. Though you are only in your twenty third years of life, and relatively new to the respective jobs you have both begun to step into, there has been little time to meet with each other in person - mostly because, and perhaps you note this with some envy, Jade has been scouring the globe.

You take a moment during your conversation to let your eyes trace her form. She has always been a rather tall woman, and yet you aren’t entirely convinced that she has stopped growing; even lounging in her chair, her calves brush against your feet, the rest of her legs somewhere beneath your chair where they bounce with the barely contained glee that shines in her eyes. She has gained muscle, her biceps now rather handsomely bulging whenever she does something even close to a flex, and a quick peek at what little of her lower body you can see before it disappears beneath the table tells you that she has developed something of a six pack. Her skin has grown darker, too; she has no tan lines from what you can tell - the straps of her black dress so thin they barely even exist at all, and give you a nice view of the even colouring across her shoulders - which leads you to believe that perhaps she has been out rather regularly naked in the sun, and that…

Your train of thought, and your attention to her words, fade in an instant, replaced with a rather warm sensation on your cheeks that has her asking for your health.

She laughs after a few moments of friendly interrogation, going back to her previous spiel detailing her adventures on some faraway island. You sip at your tea, listening to the sound of her voice more than her words; the excitement that raises her pitch, the soft lilting tones. It warms your chest in a way you try desperately to ignore, and continues to warm it until you can’t stand the sensation.

You take a longer sip of your now-cool drink, and choke.

Jade’s by your side in moments, but you can’t have her near. You fly from your seat into the cafe itself, your hands clasped tightly over your mouth, and rudely shove past people in your haste to reach the bathroom concealed at the back. Relief floods through you for only a second as you burst through the door with more force than intended, slam it shut and lock it swiftly behind you, before it is replaced with searing pain as you begin to retch into your clasped hands.

Your body heaves with desperate judders to dislodge the petal stuck in your throat. Spittle drips into your palms, tinged pink with blood, as the sounds of your loud dry heaves fills your ears. It is utterly disgusting, downright _debasing_ , and every moment of empty convulsion sears with agony through your stomach and throat.

Soon, your face feels numb. You are only aware of the tears that stream down your cheeks through the horrifically wet sobs that echo around the empty bathroom, only slightly louder than the gurgles that wring your throat. It hurts, it sears down from the very pit of your stomach to the very back of your esophagus, and soon you are on your knees as you desperately try to expel the petal from your body, too weak and shaken to stand up.

It slips out in a glob of pink spit, a sodden pile of mush rotten most of the way through. With it gone you can finally breathe, and you do so gratefully, gasping down painful gulps of air that have your stomach churning. You barely register the sensation of feeling sick, the acidic taste and the sudden bursts of saliva your mouth produces, before your body crawls of its own command over to the toilet, and expels its contents into the water below.

By the time you are done, you are exhausted and shaking. Tears stream down your cheeks steadily, but you have no energy to wipe them away, nor any dignity left to feel that they should be removed. Your skin is likely blotchy already, your makeup utterly ruined. The tears can do no worse than let you release chemical frustration.

Jade knocks tentatively on the door. Through inches of wood, her muffled voice asks if you are alright.

Your only reply is a soft sob as you cough as mulch flies out against the rim of the toilet lid.

  
  
Your afternoon tea ruined, you take a taxi home at the request of Jade, who hovers over you the entire time until you are safely within the confines of the car.

It is barely a five minute drive and yet, with how preoccupied your mind is, a swirl of thoughts you can only barely begin to string together, it seems to take mere seconds. You pay the driver, offer him a generous tip when you find yourself too tired to work out the exact change he must return, and enter your home with soft, shuffling steps.

You barely have the presence of mind to recognise that you are, in fact, in your home. Your body feels weak, heavy, in dire need of rest. It takes everything you have to go through the process of peeling off your heels, placing them in the right shelf of your shoe rack, trudging into the kitchen to open your tumble dryer, and pull out whatever casual clothes seem like the easiest to slip into after you strip yourself out of your dress, which you leave in a heap on the linoleum floor.

You only come back to your senses when you feel leather beneath your palms. Your eyes tiredly trail down to your lap, curled up with your legs partly to the side as you lean heavily into the arm of the sofa, pressing into the soft cushions that support you. The book feels heavy on your legs, bearing down a weight you know can’t exist for something so small, but exists all the same; an emotional burden, perhaps, or a logical one.

Tendrils of fear seep into your mind. They pierce through your barriers of logic, and unfurl a more primal emotion inside.

You are too tired for denial today.

You open the book, let your intuition guide you to the page you need, and begin to read.

 

The doctor is grim when she confirms that your suspicious were, in fact, true.

There are flowers in your lungs. Unlike with John, the odd case of the flower diseases that worked in tandem with one another to threaten his life, there is only the one for you. The roots of your flowers have buried themselves deeply in the soft flesh of your chest, of your lungs, and have been growing there for several years; a decade, perhaps, the doctor suggests with a look too knowing for her own good. You can only peer down at your feet, feeling like a scolded child.

There is nothing wrong with her assumption. The flowers have been there ever since you saw lime green text fill your screen. Subconsciously, you always knew they were.

The flowers have been left to fester. It is a strange case, she tells you with something like pity. Usually, the knowing of unrequited love causes the petals to start tumbling from victims’ lips within a few days - yet yours only began to fall a week or so ago, and deteriorated quickly once they did.

She hypothesises that the cause is denial. Your nails bite into the plastic of the table you sit on as she details this, and she scribbles something down upon her noteboard. You are almost convinced it contains the words _stupid girl_ somewhere in the illegible scrawl of her handwriting. Denial of your feelings, or perhaps simple ignorance of their existence, and continued practice of this throughout the years, allowed the flowers to grow without you suffering the typically fatal consequences. It is extraordinary, she says, in a voice that makes your heart stop for the barest of moments. It is extraordinary that you have survived.

The flowers are in an advanced stage of decay, and their roots are burrowed deep. Surgery is not an option.

You ask her, very quietly, how long you have to live.

She tells you she honestly doesn’t know.

But it’s not long.

 

You determine yourself to let no word of this reach your friends. It has only been a few years since John’s incident, and that was a close enough call as any of you would have liked; even now, it has become something of a habit for all of you to speak with him nigh daily about flowers, out of some deeply ingrained fear that they may come back. You couldn’t worry them with something like this on the back of your continued fears for John’s life. You’re not even sure that the doctor is correct about your potential death.

… Which is a lie, of course. You have poured yourself over books upon books since you were diagnosed with the flowers in your lungs. Books upon books upon books clutter your home, scattered in an organised mess on your kitchen table, on every flat surface in your living room, even, somehow, in the empty basin of your bath; anything even vaguely to do with the flower diseases, all the lore and the fact and the fiction, all the ridiculous theories and the terrifying truths - and nothing has contradicted what the doctor told you.

Some part of you still wishes to believe that she is wrong. Some part of you, a very tiny part that you had thought dead long ago, the part of you that seems like a small girl still clutching desperately to the ends of her mother’s dress as she sobs for fear of the dark, wants to believe that you will not die. It brings tears to your eyes after each book you read with no convincing evidence to your potential survival; it brings hope to your heart with each minor detail that could prove to save your life.

You despise it. You utterly _loathe_ this part of you. _I want to live_ , it cries out in the dead of night, when there is nothing to distract your thoughts but the sound of your own breathing, and perhaps the sound of a few late-night cars on the road outside. _I don’t want to die_.

It’s preposterous, of course. You know the facts. You know what will happen to you, regardless of how desperate that small part of you may be. You know you will die. There is nothing you can do for a disease this advanced, and all those hopeful twinges are just that; the pathetic hopes of a dying woman’s innocent self, when truly all she wants is to die in peace with some form of dignity.

That does not mean, of course, that it stops you from noticing how thin you are becoming. You seem unrecognisable to yourself in the mirror; before you, where once there stood a proud woman of regality and beauty, there now stands a woman with hollow eyes, cheekbones that stand out far too much, skin that stretches where it should be supple and soft, and clothes that have begun to slip from her shoulders and her hips.

With each day that passes, you become more and more aware of the fact that you are wasting away, turning into someone who is not entirely Rose Lalonde.

 

Of all the people to figure it out, you honestly had not expected it to be John.

You supposed you should have. He is no longer the young, naive, closeted boy he used to be, and he has gone through a worse version of this disease before. If anyone, you should have expected that it _would_ be him to notice the signs, the disappearances, the subtle attempts to excuse yourself from meetings or conversations to expel your stomach contents into the nearest receptacle. He has done these things and more, all while under the assumption that you would never twig onto what it was that had him pushing himself away.

The confrontation is… nothing like a confrontation at all.

He holds your hands across your kitchen table, a meal partially eaten cooling quickly between the two of you. His face is sad, but it is not pitying; it is _understanding_ , and in a way that is almost so much worse. The downwards twitch of his lip, the subtle rise of his brows, the slight lack of shine to his perfectly sky blue eyes - and your heart breaks.

So do your walls.

Between sobs, you whimper to him all the little things you had promised to keep inside. The fears of your inevitable death. The worries of what you will leave behind, and what you shall face once you die. The hopes of living even without a confession, no matter how hopeless it may be. He holds your hands throughout, rubbing soothing circles into the backs of your hands with his thumbs as you make a mess of yourself at your own kitchen table. You sob until you shake with the force of them, and continue to sob even then, resting your forehead against the cool cloth of your table, your arms stretched out to clasp his firmly, too unstable to recognise that he would not slip away if you let go.

He waits calmly for you to run yourself out into soft whimpers against the table, thumbs still rubbing soothing circles into your skin. You are doubtlessly sure that he can feel the bones beneath, prominent to a degree that worries you beyond all else. You find that you do not mind so much. You are splayed out in front of him, bare to the soul for what your frenzied babbling has done, awaiting judgement from someone who feels like the judge and executioner both.

He takes a deep breath.

You need to tell her, he says, in a voice that sounds to your ears like the knife that cuts the cord holding the guillotine's blade.

You try to fight back. There are a thousand arguments on your tongue, quick witted truths and scathing lies, an endless pool of insults you can rely on if he should be the first to raise his voice - but he ruins it all, saps every ounce of fight from your very core with a sad look and a soft, _she’d miss you_.

You know what he truly means. _We’d_ miss you. It’s evident in the slight sheen in his eyes, that tiny film of tears that he has not yet let fall, in the slight shake to his hands now that you’re paying close attention to them. He knows how it feels, and he is scared for you. But he had hope.

You let yourself believe, for the rest of the afternoon, that you can have that hope too.

Perhaps she’ll say she loves you.

 

You are no coward, but even you succumb to cowardice.

You are on a time limit. If ever there should be more reason for concern, it is that blood has started to fall from your lips as frequently as the rotten mulch of the petals. You have no time left to squander with, and if you wish to have any sort of chance at survival, it is imperative to act now.

But you can’t.

For as much as you may prefer to portray yourself as an aloof and infaillible person, you must admit to your own human failures. There are some things about yourself that you will always succumb to, no matter how hard you try not to. Emotions are, sadly, one of them.

You are scared. You are utterly, truly terrified of rejection.

How could you not be? Exposing yourself to someone as open as Jade comes with a plethora of consequences that you no longer have the energy to map out. You can only think of the most pressing potentials: if she rejects you, harshly, you are convinced the flowers will kill you instantly; if she rejects you, gently, then you will perhaps have a few more days to live at most, since denial seems to be what is keeping you alive even now; and if she accepts you…

You don’t get your hopes up for it.

Which is why you have refused to go near her ever since your heart to heart with John. It is significantly safer this way, even if it increases your risk factor drastically; to pretend that everything shall sort itself out without your input is something of a relief, for the first time in your life. You have tried to face it head on, have tried your utmost to do as you promised John, but each time you have reached the door… something has pulled you back.

It is not unlike the itch you feel that provides you with knowledge. This _something_ is impossible to ignore, and woefully crushing; each time you gain the courage to attempt your emotional revelation, your body turns on its own and stalks right back inside. It would be infuriating if it weren’t relieving at the same time.

It leaves you with the same conundrum, however; you are no closer to saving your own life, and as such are only ever closer to facing the end of it, with no possible solution besides waiting for the day the roots finally pierce your heart.

You have already accepted that you don’t want to die. The very real potential of death breathing down your neck as each day of inaction passes is something you truly fear, but just as equally do you fear placing yourself in the hands of a woman who may just as quickly crush your heart as heal it. You could not possibly confess everything you have kept tightly under lid for ten long, ignorant years, and yet you could not possibly face death saying you have no regrets.

Round and round in circles your thoughts go, a twisted merry-go-round of sleepless nights and haunted days. You wish you could will yourself to accept one side or the other, but you are too proud to die so young when you have so much to achieve, and yet you are too scared to fight your own body for control to venture past your front door.

There is nothing you can do but wait, and be dragged under by the self-pity and the self-hate as calendar counts down the remaining days of your life, in the cold non-comfort of your own, empty home.

It is, you think as you shakily sip your tea, a rather sad way to die.

  
  
You really should stop underestimating John.

For all his faults and flaws, he he always been something of the leader for your small group. Jade may have been the one who brought you all together, but John is the one who keeps you all together, a fairly unassuming adhesive one would more often than not look over when browsing the hardware store for strong bonding glue.

You should have known that he would not simply let you waste away. You should have known that he, of all people, would have a backup plan should his initial talk with you fail. You should have known that he was devious enough to trick, with rather embarrassing ease, both you and Jade into being in your home alone together; you with the promise of one final friendly conversation with him, and Jade, you assume, with the allure of spending time together with friends.

Or perhaps you shouldn’t have known it at all. For all his faults and flaws, John’s unpredictability and unassuming nature can be both blessing and curse, a blank spot in your nigh infinite knowledge of the inner workings of your friends. As much as you would like to think that you know all of their quirks, their tells, their abilities and drawbacks, it could not be more apparent that, at least in the case of John, you are utterly, incomprehensibly wrong.

Jade sits with you on your sofa, steaming cup of tea in hand and yet entirely forgotten, waiting for you to speak. You can’t help but think of all the ways John must have had a hand in this, must have meticulously planned the entire night out, to find yourself in such a position that she is still waiting for you to inform her of your illness, as well as of your feelings. It would have been significantly easier to inform her beforehand, and you would have expected him to do such, if not for the genuine concern that furrows her brow as her eyes trace over you thinning body. Perhaps once it would have been nice to feel so wonderfully scrutinised by her gaze, but now it simply feels… invasive.

The air is thick and tense, but you aren’t sure how to start. How could you possibly begin to explain any of this? She has been through this with John once before, of course, but this instance is different. There is no way you could ease her gently into the cause of your disease, and no way for you to tear the gaping wound open to let her peer inside for morbid curiosity to take control, and her own deductions to be made.

But you can hardly stand the silence, either. Torn between two impossible potentials, two outcomes you hardly like the sounds of, forced to sit and wait for the inevitable to occur. Your tea tastes bitter as you sip at it, listening to the sound of your rasped breaths in comparison to her own smooth, gentle exhales. The various clocks throughout your home tick in time, and as each second passes by, you can feel her slipping further and further away.

Her voice, when she speaks, startles you.

She asks if you’re okay.

Your mind goes utterly blank, and before you can help it, the truth spills from your lips; you are dying.

You hear her gasp and wince at the shatter of china against your pristine floors, wondering to yourself who will clean up the stains once you’re gone.

You tell her everything. It doesn’t so much come out like a flood as a stream; rather than a fervent cascade of words and emotions and complications, as had happened with John, you find your mind placing everything together in a coherent order, one that slips from your lips and rolls off your tongue with such ease that it simply flows.

You don’t look at Jade as you speak. You focus is captured by the off-colour reflection of your face in your tea, entranced by the ripples that distort your once-familiar features into something even more unrecognisable. You can see your lips move, and yet you are not entirely aware of the words that slip past them; your own voice is dulled to your ears, and in its place you are overly-aware of the weakened beating of your heart.

A once firm staccato now barely keeps a rhythm.

It takes you a moment to realise that you have finished speaking. You come back to yourself as if waking from a particularly harsh dream, drained and groggy, feeling your senses return one by one rather than all at once. The warmth of your cup radiates through your palms, but is significantly cooler than it was before; the sound of clocks seems louder, somehow, and Jade’s steady breaths seem somewhat fainter; when you drift your eyes from their sightless gaze through the murky liquid in your cup up to her face, you recognise a look of shocked horror that contorts her features, and your heart, for a moment, stops.

You can feel the roots press against the dying organ, and struggle not to choke.

You struggle even more when you suddenly find yourself with a lapful of very tearful, very angry Jade.

Her weight is almost crushing on your frail limbs, and yet she is careful not to sit on you too hard. Her hands, likewise, curl around your shoulders tight enough to be felt, but not enough to bruise - and the way she shakes you can only be described as tenderly punishing.

You are so taken aback by the sudden shift in positions that for a moment, you are stunned. Though you can see her lips move, and hear her words wash over you in a frightened, teary rise and fall, your ability to truly process them doesn’t arrive till part way through her tirade. You are surrounded by a wash of sounds that make no sense, and yet your heart seems to understand them all the same, and beats along with the steady, quick thump thump of your body against the cushions as she shakes you with the utmost care.

It takes your mind a moment to restart itself, then another to catch up with her frantic flood of brokenly harsh sobs, but once the words have fully processed through the various filters in your brain, have been deconstructed and reconstructed a thousand times, it stops again almost immediately.

She screams a strangled, frustrated sound at you, before diving down to press her lips to yours with such force that you sink back into the sofa, and pull her down with you.

A warmth blooms inside your chest, radiating out to the tips of your toes, to the tips of your fingers, to the very top of your head. The roots inside you wither and die under the gentle simmer of reciprocated love.

You kiss her back, and feel the heavy weight of death hovering over your shoulder slowly slip away.

  
  
A doctor’s visit one day later confirms what you had assumed.

The flowers are gone from your system.

The doctor herself seems relieved by the news, though you truly cannot blame her. Between John and yourself, she must have had more than enough of near-fatal flower diseases and quick recuperation at the last minute. She certainly seems to hold the aura of a woman wise beyond her ages as her eyes flicker between you and Jade, a knowing smile on her lips.

It makes you wonder how many cases she’s seen that could have been so easily medicated well before the life-threatening potentials both you and John showed.

You do not think on it long. By the time you have left the doctor’s office, Jade has slipped her fingers between yours and taken your hand for her own, swinging your arms gently between the two of you as you walk. You can’t help the soft smile that slips across your lips as she squeezes your hand, nor can you stop the bubbling laughter that spills out from your throat much more comfortably than petals when, upon squeezing her hand in return, she makes an indignantly playful sound, and engages the two of you in a game of gentle squeezes.

Summer slowly transitions into fall as you step outside the building and into the crisp, warm air. Though no leaves have yet fallen, the trees are dotted with yellow, and the wind has begun to pick up to rustle through them and form delicate music. It is still relatively bright, though a film of clouds cascades dark shadows in counterpoint with the bright sun, and all retains a sensation of homely warmth.

It is an utterly picturesque day for wonderful news.

Jade tenderly tugs you along as you lose yourself to your thoughts, her excited words washing over you like a comforting wave.

You are brought out of your thoughts only by Jade stopping rather suddenly in front of the cafe with the white circular tables and red material umbrellas, an excited, almost childish gleam in her eyes as she utterly beams at you. You can’t help but smile back as she guides you to your usual spot, drops with a thud into her seat, and stretches her spine over the back of the chair with a loud yawn.

Each action is utterly familiar to you, a routine the two of you have performed a thousand times before.

The only difference, this time, is the way she holds your hand beneath the table once she’s straightened herself again, stroking her thumb across your knuckles as tenderly as she would run her fingers across one of her many botanical pursuits.

It is the slightest change, and yet it has a delicate heat rising to your cheeks that makes her laugh, a sound like tubular bells, a sound you utterly adore.

For once, you tell yourself not to overthink, not to overanalyse, to simply enjoy the moment as you hold your girlfriend’s hand beneath a table outside your favourite cafe on your very first date, listening to her laughter make music with the sound of the wind through early autumn leaves.

It’s perfect.


End file.
